


All Roads Lead To

by pauraque



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Comfort, Community: femslashex, F/F, Forgiveness, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 08:17:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/pseuds/pauraque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After leaving Hogwarts, Cho isn't sure if there's a place for her anymore in the fight against Voldemort. Luna comes to convince her that there is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Roads Lead To

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> Since you mentioned you were less familiar with the books than the movies... In the books, Cho has already completed school by Book 7 (she's one year above Harry), but returns for the Battle of Hogwarts. I think the movies imply that she was there all along, but I had the book version of events in mind. I hope that's all right and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thanks to [Hannelore](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannelore/) for the last-minute beta read.

Cho sits at the kitchen table, letting her toast go cold. Mum is to the left of her, sipping her black coffee and gazing out the grey, rain-streaked window. Dad is to the right, reading an arithmancy book over his eggs. Always a book now, never a newspaper anymore.

They do not talk about Cedric, or Harry, or You Know Who, or the fact that Cho's final year at school ended in the headmaster's murder. The wireless, as always, is off. There is only the clink of Dad's fork against his plate and the heavy sighs of cars passing in the wet street, driven by people who cannot see that Cho's parents' house is there.

There's a momentary bustle as Mum and Dad gather up their things and leave for work. Dad squeezes her shoulder briefly, and Mum drops a quick kiss on her forehead as though she's a little girl. Then they're gone, and Cho is alone again in the heavy silence of the house.

Why Cho hasn't looked for work yet is another thing they don't talk about. Talking about it could mean admitting it might not be safe, and that is something they don't do. So instead she sits in her room (which doesn't feel like hers, but like a well-preserved museum exhibit of the eleven-year-old girl she isn't anymore) and tries to write.

She used to write so much that it was like she didn't know how to stop; one Christmas she begged her parents for a self-writing quill because it would all come out faster than her hand could move, people and places and happenings flowing out of her imagination like water down a falls. She doesn't know where the quill is now.

She ekes out a few lines, feeling irritated by the sensation of the pen on the paper, her body uneasy in the hard-backed chair. She tries again to write about Cedric, but it is overwhelming — the vast stretch of time ahead of her, rolling on and on without Cedric in it. When she thinks of Cedric, she thinks of reading a book and finding that all the pages past the first few chapters have been torn out, leaving the binding loose and empty.

But when she tries to write it down, it comes out all wrong, trite and inadequate. Letting out something like a growl, she scribbles out her words and tears out the page in frustration, crumples it and hurls it in the vague direction of the rubbish bin, feeling like a petulant child.

After the rain has stopped, she goes out to the Muggle shops. Her parents have never told her not to go out (though of course to forbid her would be to admit there's a reason to do so), but nonetheless she feels as though she shouldn't be here, hands stuffed into her pockets and head down. She finds herself almost angrily envious of the people when she sees them striding purposefully up and down the dark-wet footpaths, going about their lives with no idea there's anything to fear.

There's a hiring sign in the window of the stationery shop. On a whim, Cho goes inside and asks for an application. The kindly smiling woman behind the counter lets her have one, but as Cho is thinking about what it would be like to disappear, her eyes light on the section that says _Schools Attended_ , and her stomach twists. She folds the paper up and stuffs it into her pocket as she walks away.

The sun is beginning to peek through the clouds as she walks past the outskirts of town, down by the old Roman road, marshy puddles in the grass glistening in the light. As she follows the road she places her feet along the edge of it like walking a tightrope, between the waterlogged earth on one side and the ancient paving stones on the other.

As she approaches the little stone bridge, she sees a woman in a bright blue pea-coat crouching down by the river. She seems to be staring intently into the water, strands of wavy blonde hair falling loose and nearly touching the surface. Cho has a thought to ask her if she's lost something or needs help, but just then the woman rises and turns, and Cho nearly stumbles into the mud, her mind bending at what she sees.

"Luna!" she cries. But this is not little Loony Lovegood, two years below her and so tiny when she sat in the common room armchairs reading books upside-down. She's grown up so much since Cho last saw her — a young woman not just in body, but in her eyes, looking somehow stronger and wiser than before. "What in the world are you doing here?"

With a pleased smile, Luna steps up to her, seeming not to notice her trainers sinking into the mud.

"Oh, don't you know? If you skip white pebbles in a running stream, it calls out the Find-It Fairy Fish. They help you find things you've lost. I was hoping they'd come and help me look for you, but maybe I didn't need them after all."

Cho lets out a sort of strangled half-laugh, barely able to process that Luna is here, and still so _her_.

"But aren't you meant to be in school? And— oh, you're standing in the muck. Come on, let's..." She offers her hand, and Luna takes it. Cho guides her up onto the road, and Luna goes further, moving up onto the bridge and sitting at the top of the arch.

"I haven't been at school since Christmas," she says as Cho sits down beside her. "It's a bit of a long story, but Hogwarts isn't safe anymore. The Death Eaters have taken it over. I'm surprised you didn't know."

She says it so easily, without judgement, but Cho still feels a wave of shame that makes her nearly dizzy.

"The Death Eaters?" she echoes. And she's been at home feeling sorry for herself and eating toast.

Luna nods. "That's why I came looking for you. I had to give you this."

She fishes in her pocket, and holds up a Galleon coin. Cho knits her brow in bewilderment, thinking it's one of Luna's mad things she comes up with, but when Luna presses it into Cho's hand, she knows what it is — not a Galleon at all, but one of the D.A. coins.

"What... Why are you giving me this?"

"It's yours," Luna says. "You left it behind in the dorms after you finished school, and I found it. We've been using them to communicate with the people who are still at school, so that we can all come and fight together when Harry's back." She's gazing out peaceably at the half-grey sky, and adds, "The breeze feels good on my face. It's nice to be outdoors."

Cho's head is swimming, trying to take it all in. "I... I don't know what to say." She's looking down at the coin, and passes her thumb over its face, feeling the bumps of the false serial number where the dates of D.A. meetings used to appear. Hot tears sting her eyes, and she doesn't want that now, so she looks out to the horizon and squeezes the coin tight in her fist until the ridges of it hurt.

"You don't have to say anything," Luna replies, as though it's rather obvious. "All you have to do is watch the coin for a message from Neville. He'll tell you when to come."

"You think he'll want me to come?" Cho blurts out, and then has to draw in her lips tightly to keep from crying.

Luna considers this, head tilted thoughtfully to one side and the wind gently blowing her hair. "Well, I want you to come," she says. "And for anyone else not to want your help against the Death Eaters because of something that happened two years ago seems, well... a bit mad."

At the idea that there's something even Luna considers to be mad, Cho lets out a sob of a laugh, and then another at the sheer _relief_ that someone, anyone, forgives her. Her heart bursting, she throws her arms round Luna and hugs her tight, hiding her tears against the shoulder of Luna's blue pea-coat.

Luna places her arms round Cho slowly, a tentative exploration of something unaccustomed.

"This is quite nice," she concludes, and they sit there like that for a minute or two, Luna cradling her on the ancient stone bridge.

When Cho feels like she can talk again without embarrassing herself, she draws away, sniffing and pressing her sleeve against the corner of her eye.

"All right," she says. "I'll come. But I don't know if I can stay with my parents anymore. They're... They don't understand." Cho hasn't fully realised the truth of that until now, and when she hears herself say it, she feels immensely sad.

"Oh," says Luna lightly, as though people confess to her that they can't trust their parents on a daily basis. "Well, you can come to where I've been hiding if you like. Ron Weasley's brother and sister-in-law's house — it's quite safe there. Would that be all right?"

Cho has been clinging to the coin all this time; she slips it into her pocket, beside the folded-up job application.

"Yes," she says. "Please."

*

Cho leaves her parents a note, but doesn't say where she's gone. Only that she's safe, and with friends. And, well, at least one of those things is true.

When they get to Shell Cottage, Bill and Fleur greet her warmly. She's afraid for a moment of what Dean will say, but when he comes downstairs and sees her, he gives her a broad smile of relief.

"Good to see you again," he says, clasping her hand in his. Seeing Luna busy taking her trainers off to clean them, he adds in a confidential tone, "All she knew was you lived somewhere in North Lanarkshire, but she said she had a plan, something to do with fish. I didn't think she had a chance of actually finding you." He shakes his head with a wry, affectionate smile. "But then, it's Luna, so I really should've known better."

The house is small, and Luna and Cho end up sharing an upstairs bedroom with a slanted diagonal ceiling and a magnificent view of Cornish waves breaking on the shore.

The first night they sleep together, Cho wonders if it's going to feel awkward. She's had her own bed all her life. When Luna gets beneath the covers beside her, she kisses Cho on the cheek and says lightly, "Good night," as though nothing could be more natural.

That's always been the funny thing about Luna. She's so strange that when you're with her, nothing feels strange at all.

*

The more Cho learns about what her parents have been keeping from her these past months, the more she feels a sort of quiet panic rising steadily in her chest, as day after day passes with no message appearing on their coins.

"I don't know if I can do this," she whispers to Luna one night, with the sea outside breathing soft and steady.

Luna is lying on her side, head propped up on her hand. The moonlight is cast on her through the window, and it lends her a kind of stark, colourless beauty, like the black-and-white films she and Dad used to go and see when she was little. She doesn't answer, but Cho can see she's listening.

"I'm nothing special," Cho says. "I'm not a hero, or anything. What if I just panic, and I'm useless, and..." She is thinking of Cedric, and imagining herself as a book with half the pages torn out, forever incomplete. "Aren't you _scared_?" she asks, incredulous at Luna's perpetual calm.

As usual, Luna thinks before answering. "Yes," she says. "But I think not doing anything about it would be scarier."

"I just don't... I don't want to miss everything," Cho says, a pleading note creeping into her voice as she wills Luna to understand. "Growing up, and having kids someday..."

This seems to strike Luna as interestingly novel; she gazes past Cho, as though into an inner world of thought and possibility. "I wonder if I'll ever have kids," she says.

Cho feels a surge of protectiveness for her, and helpless anger that a seventeen year old girl should have to wonder if she'll live long enough to be a mother. She slides her hand into Luna's and squeezes.

"I like that," Luna says softly, smiling in the moonlight.

Cho realises that she does too. The feeling of Luna's hand warmly nestled in hers is drawing a confused sort of pleasure up through her body, driving away the fear. It feels good to be close to this girl, a girl who came so far just to look for her. To bring her back.

"You're looking at me so funnily," Luna remarks conversationally. "No one's ever looked at me quite that way before. It's a bit like how people look sometimes before they're going to kiss."

Startled, Cho hears herself ask, half in alarm and half in hope, "Do you want me to kiss you?"

Luna smiles and answers simply, "Yes, I think that would be very nice."

It's almost like moving in a dream, how she lifts herself up and kisses Luna for the first time. It's different from kissing a boy, but not as different as Cho might have thought — softer, but just as sweet. The sound of the sea roars quietly without, a soothing hush that feels like it's holding them steady as they explore this feeling, their lips meeting and parting again and again.

With a delicate last kiss at the corner of Luna's mouth, Cho pulls back a little and smiles. She expects to feel silly, or embarrassed, or different somehow. She doesn't, really.

"I never knew you liked girls," she says, a little sheepishly.

"You've never asked me if I did," Luna reasonably points out. She considers a moment, then adds, "No one ever has, actually."

"Was that your first kiss?"

Luna smiles bigger than Cho has ever seen her, a smile that reaches up to her eyes. "Yes," she says.

They embrace one another, and though she tries, Cho can't quite silence the tiny voice that wonders whether her first kiss will also be her last.

*

When Cho wakes up the next morning, Luna is sitting on the edge of the bed, peering at something cupped in her hands.

"What is it?" she asks, stretching and wiping the sleep from her eyes.

With a smile somehow both pleased and very grave, Luna shows her the coin. Cho's heart jumps, and all at once she's entirely awake. She can just make out the words now inscribed along the rim:

_Harry is back._


End file.
